Saturday, October 04, 2014

The oil and gas industry, rather than diversifying and investing heavily in solar and wind power, continues to chant a mantra of "drill, baby drill" like the cretin from Alaska so popular with brain dead Republicans. A new part of that mantra is that natural gas is going to deliver America from foreign oil dependence and save the environment. Like much of what comes out of the oil and gas industry the ads run by Exxon, BP, and the Petroleum Institute don't tell all of the story. As I not in my not yet published October column in VEER Magazine, I was once an in-house lawyer for an oil company, so I understand the intricacies of oil and gas exploration and the side effects of secondary and tertiary recovery not t mention fracking. A column in the Roanoke Times calls attention to some of the ignored costs of the natural gas obsession. Here are highlights:

Natural gas is indisputably cleaner and cheaper than oil or coal, a
factor that makes it desirable for a nation that, until now, has been
fearful of being dependent on foreign energy sources. Our country has
been energized by the natural gas boom, which may not peak until 2030,
allowing us to sell some of this valuable fuel, whose smaller carbon
footprint makes it desirable worldwide, especially to our European
friends who are tied to Russian energy sources and their unpredictable
reliability.

To find the true cost of natural gas, however, requires including
ancillary costs that are not part of the business model: the cost that
communities accrue in their doing or having done business with the power
companies; the unbudgeted costs of disaster clean-up; reduced land
values where pipelines cross; remediation of by-spills from leaking
pipes that invade the water table.

Ryan Hankins, in his Aug. 21 commentary (“Don’t blindly oppose pipeline
based on fear”), asks us not to “blindly oppose” the Mountain Valley
Pipeline “based on fear.” It would be a blessing to be “blind,” to not
know so much about the havoc being wrought by this industry The pipeline
to which he refers is but one of many “straws” sucking from the
Marcellus Shale, siphoning off the dwindling supply of natural gas.

The natural gas industry, in its hydraulic fracturing process, requires 2
billion gallons of water a day, according to the Government
Accountability Office. Fear instructs me that once approved by the
Federal Regulatory Commission, the proliferation of these natural gas
pipelines will encourage the growth of fracking along its length, in
spite of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s assurance that he will not allow it in
the George Washington National Forest. And where will the water come
from? And where will the toxic wastewater go? . . . . Gov. Christie of New Jersey recently vetoed a law passed by his
legislature that would have prevented importing and disposing of
wastewater from other states.

Not mentioned in the column is the increased frequency of earthquakes in areas where fracking is active. Too many Virginians forget the dangers of increasing earthquakes in central Virginia where the North Anna nuclear power plant sits near fault lines. And lets not forget the vulnerability of the Lake Gaston watershed that provides a huge portion of the water for south Hampton Roads. The cost of expanded natural gas production in Virginia could be huge when these elements are factored in.

I've said before that for fundamentalist Christians - and I would extend this to Islamic fundamentalists as well - the most terrifying prospect is having to think for oneself and face the fact that modern scientific knowledge is proving many dearly held beliefs to be false. A prime example is the human genome project proof that Adam and Eve never existed as historic figures. From that discovery, the entire Christian story line of the Fall and Christ redemption begins to come crashing to the ground. For those with what I see as almost a form of mental illness that demands certainty and the ability to "check off the boxes" to confirm one's goodness or assurance of going to "heaven" knowledge and intellectualism threaten the entire artificial world in which they live. A piece in Patheos looks at the terror knowledge and intellectualism strikes in fundamentalists. Here are highlights:

It is much easier to believe you understand who you are and to be
stable when your core belief system is stable. For folks like liberals
and progressives this is a little more difficult because the walls
around our core beliefs are a little less rigid and more willing to flex
as new information presents itself. Which means that we, more
frequently than fundamentalists, are reshaping our understanding of who
we are and how we relate to society, even if in small ways.

This
just isn’t true for a fundamentalist Christians. The protective walls
around their core beliefs are tall and rigid – and with good reason. We
have to keep in mind, these core beliefs are so much more than ideas or
ideals, they are identification and identity. Who we understand
ourselves to be is formed around them. When you challenge a specific
belief you are also, in small part, challenging the person’s
understanding of who they are.

For fundamentalist Christians, it is even more complicated than just
that. In both direct and subtle ways, they believe their salvation, at
least in part, is dependent upon being correct on issues of faith.

Intellectualism
invites the constant assessment of the “correctness” of a person’s
belief system. That’s dangerous ground for a fundamentalist Christian.
When you confront them on a particular belief you are not only
confronting them on an idea that they have held to more rigidly for a
longer time than most other folks but you are confronting the very core
of who they understand themselves to be. For them, it is those core
beliefs upon which their salvation hangs in the balance, at least in
part. Questioning it doesn’t just question the thought but, for them, it
puts into question a lifetime of holding on tightly to that thought.

When
you take all of that into consideration, it’s really not surprise that
most fundamentalist Christians react negatively to or avoid all together
any intellectual questioning of their core belief systems.

It's a sad form of existence in my view, but that's precisely what demagogues in the pulpits and your Muslim imam - and bitter old Catholic cardinals - seek to maintain. Religion remains the source of so much misery in the world. Fundamentalists of all faiths are the true slaves and, in my view, knowingly or unknowingly, the agents of evil.

This month the Roman Catholic Church will hold an Extraordinary Synod in Rome where bishops and cardinals will ostensible meet to discuss possible changes in the Church's position on divorced Catholics and other issues that liberals are saying are driving the decline of the Church in Europe and North America. Many apologists for the Church seem to be hoping that Pope Francis can push through changes to modernize the Church. It would be nice to see that happen, but I'm not holding my breath. Moreover, I hope Francis has a food taster - I would not put it past some of the power mad bitter old queens in the Vatican to want to hasten him to his heavenly reward so to speak. Here are highlights from the New York Times on the coming gathering:

From
the outset of his papacy, Pope Francis has encouraged a robust and open
debate over the contentious social issues that have long sundered the
Roman Catholic Church. Now, with a critical meeting on the theme of
family about to begin at the Vatican, he is seemingly getting what he
wanted: a charged atmosphere with cardinals jousting over how and
whether the church should change.

Conservatives,
in particular, are trying to stop any prospects for allowing divorced
and remarried Catholics to receive the sacrament of holy communion. A
group of powerful conservative cardinals has released a handful of books
— timed to coincide with the opening of the Vatican meeting on Sunday —
that are fashioned as rebuttals to such proposals but that some
analysts see as thinly veiled swipes at Francis.

“The
conservatives have already mobilized,” said Marco Politi, a longtime
Vatican analyst and the author of a new book, “Francis Among the
Wolves.” “Now it is up to the reformers to come out.”

For
Francis, the two-week gathering is the beginning of a yearlong process
that could determine what sort of changes he will, or will not, bring to
the church’s approach to social issues such as divorce, gay civil
unions or single parents. The meeting, known as an Extraordinary Synod,
is an open forum at which 191 bishops, cardinals and other church
leaders are expected to debate these and other issues, and to set the
agenda for a final, decisive synod next October.

Having
enjoyed a mostly charmed papacy, Francis is now plunging into contested
terrain that requires confronting entrenched power blocs in the Vatican
and beyond.

Some analysts believe he [Francis] sent a pointed signal last month when he oversaw a wedding of 20 couples in St. Peter’s Basilica, including couples who had been living together and a person whose previous marriage had been annulled.

“The synod is dedicated to the family because the context of the family
has changed from the way it was 33 years ago,” said Cardinal Lorenzo
Baldisseri during a news conference at the Vatican on Friday. Cardinal
Baldisseri, appointed by the pope to oversee the synod, added, “We need
to be able to put the church’s reality in today’s reality.”

He
noted that although the Western news media and many Western Catholic
leaders have fixated on certain social issues, the talks would be
wide-ranging, given the church’s global scope, to include issues like
poverty, migration and polygamy.

Yet
for many, the bellwether topic will be whether church leaders will ease
the process for allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive
communion. The church already uses annulments to declare that a marriage
was never actually valid, clearing the way for Catholics who have
divorced and remarried to receive communion. But annulments are usually a
cumbersome, time-consuming process. Recently, Francis appointed a
commission to simplify procedures.

The opposition is led by a group of conservative cardinals who this week
published a book, “Remaining in the Truth of Christ,” that included
essays intended to rebut Cardinal Kasper. In a conference call with
journalists this week, one of the authors, Cardinal Raymond L. Burke,
said the church could not change teachings on marriage and bluntly
criticized Cardinal Kasper.

Mr.
Politi, the Vatican analyst, said the emerging political fault lines
were actually a boon to Francis, who organized the synod over two
meetings — divided by a year — in order to stir the sort of deep
conversation needed to bring a mandate for change.

“You
can only have big changes to the Catholic Church if all the bishops and
cardinals are involved,” Mr. Politi said. “For Pope Francis, it is
important that people speak out, even if they speak out against him.”

The Church remains a Medieval monarchy where the Pope as emperor needs to be just as worried as monarchs of old about treachery, poisonings, and insurrection by power mad courtiers and underlings. If I were Francis I'd sleep with trusted guards watching over me and a food tester. The Vatican is a snake pit filled with bitter neurotic old men unduly obsessed with all things sexual.

When investigations of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell in "Giftgate" first began, the GOP pundits all claimed it was a partisan plot - some even in their delusions claimed that Obama was orchestrating the entire affair - but the multi-count conviction of Taliban Bob and his wife made it clear that there was fire where the GOP claimed there was smoke at most. As the early phases of the 2016 jockeying begins among the would be GOP candidates, it is telling that so many of them are under criminal investigation at present. Like McDonnell - and the Christofascists who make up so much of the hardcore GOP base - there seems to be a mindset that the rules apply to others. A column in the Washington Post looks at the legal problems of some of the contenders. Here are excerpts:

Why is the lineup of prospective GOP presidential candidates beginning to look like, well, a lineup?

Chris Christie went to campaign this week
for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, putting the New Jersey governor in the
company of a man who is in almost as much legal jeopardy as he is.
Between them, the two would-be 2016 presidential nominees are the
subjects of six investigations.

But Texas Gov. Rick Perry, another presidential aspirant, is far ahead of them in the mug-shot primary: He’s already under indictment
on two felony counts related to abuse of power. And, speaking of
felonies, former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, long considered
presidential timber, was convicted on 11 corruption counts after his salacious trial this summer that disgraced him and his wife.

Democrats
are trying to tie another prospective presidential candidate, Ohio Gov.
John Kasich, to a Republican contributor who was convicted this summer
of witness tampering in a campaign-finance case; the governor had been
subpoenaed to appear in the case but was never called.

Beyond
that, the Republican governors of Iowa, Kansas, Georgia, Pennsylvania,
Maine, South Carolina and New Mexico all face varying degrees of legal
liability on matters ranging from influence peddling to the firing of
whistleblowers. Completing the GOP version of a most-wanted list: John Rowland,
the former governor of Connecticut, who was found guilty last month of
conspiracy charges in a campaign-finance case. It was the second time he
had been convicted on criminal charges.

This doesn’t necessarily mean governors, or other politicians, are more
corrupt than they used to be; there has always been some sense of
entitlement among elected leaders, a belief that the usual rules don’t
apply to them. Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, adds that “unfathomable amounts
of money flowing through the system” have increased the opportunity for
misconduct, while the proliferation of media and electronic paper
trails makes it more likely to get caught.

[T]here’s some rough justice that Republicans,
who popularized this criminalization of politics in the 1990s [against Bill Clinton], now find
at least three of their top presidential prospects being hoist with the
GOP’s own petard. New Jersey’s Christie,
of course, has Bridgegate and related troubles. The campaign of
Wisconsin’s Walker is being investigated over allegedly illegal campaign
finance coordinated with various conservative groups; a federal appeals
panel ruled last month that prosecutors could proceed with the
long-stalled investigation. Then there’s Perry . . . a grand jury has indicted Perry on charges carrying up to 109 years in prison combined.

As more voters - especially women - wake up the the reality of just how extreme the Republican Party has become and that the party platform is to restrict contraception and to gut the Affordable Health Care Act, some extremist Republican candidates have disingenuously begun to claim that they support over the counter access to some forms of birth control. These claims, of course, are diametrically opposed to the prior actions and stances. Facing possible defeat they have done what their Christofascists always do: start lying. It's the "Christian" thing to do right? A piece in The Nation looks at this dishonest ploy and the truth about some of these candidates, including Ed Gillespie here in Virginia. Here are excerpts:

It’s time to call bullshit on the GOP’s embrace of over-the-counter
birth control. Several Republican candidates, under fire for radical
positions on women’s health, have recently adopted the idea in a naked
attempt to woo female voters. These politicians say they’re all in favor
of access to contraception. But sudden calls for the pill to be
available without a prescription do not signal a real shift in
conservative attitudes toward reproductive rights. They simply mask
tired opposition to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurers
cover birth control.

The list of Republicans that have endorsed the idea includes Senate
nominees Cory Gardner (Colorado), Tom Tillis (North Carolina), Ed
Gillespie (Virginia) and Mike McFadden (Minnesota). Republicans running
for the House have also spoken up for over-the-counter access.

None of these people were championing the proposal before their
campaigns. Instead, they were working to limit women’s access to
abortion and other healthcare. Gardner, who started the over-the-counter
trend in June with an op-ed in The Denver Post,
has campaigned for “personhood” measures that would outlaw abortion and
possibly some forms of birth control since at least 2006. Early in his
campaign Gardner denounced the state-level personhood legislation he’d
supported—yet he’s still a co-sponsor on a federal bill that would have
the same impact. Gardner has resorted to claiming that bill doesn’t exist.

Then there’s Tom Tillis, who endorsed over-the-counter birth control
during a debate with Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan in September. As the
top Republican in the state House, Tillis shepherded extreme
anti-choice legislation in a decisively dishonest manner, inserting
restrictions into unrelated bills like one ostensibly about motorcycle
safety. Tillis, like other Republicans trumpeting their support for
over-the-counter contraception, opposes not only the ACA’s birth control
mandate but the healthcare law in general, which has a range of other
benefits for women.

The latest candidate to pivot to contraception when confronted about
her record is Joni Ernst, a Senate hopeful in Iowa who supports a
personhood amendment as well as criminal prosecution of doctors who
provide abortions.

[A]ttempts to block abortion access—for example, by cutting funds for
clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide a range of services besides
abortion—can have the perverse effect of making it more difficult for
women to get other healthcare, birth control included.

Nor is making contraception available without a prescription an
alternative to the birth control mandate (or, needless to say, the
entire healthcare law). Over-the-counter birth control has support from
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a point that
several Republican candidates have pointed out when their motives were
questioned. Yet the same medical association is quite clear that women
still need insurance coverage for contraception. Not all women can or
want to take the pill, and other forms of birth control like the IUD are
expensive and require a doctor’s appointment. In June, ACOG warned politicians against using calls for over-the-counter contraception “as a political tool.”

That Republicans need such a tool to alter their reputation among women is obvious. . . . why over-the-counter birth control, specifically? It’s a win-win-win for
Republicans trying to appeal to female voters, while bashing Obamacare
and boosting their free-market street cred.

To understand why this sudden embrace of “access” is a racket, and a dangerous one, consider Kevin Williamson, National Review’s self-described “roving correspondent.” In a recent post titled “Five Reasons Why You’re Too Dumb to Vote,” Williamson characterizes
women who care about preserving access to abortion or the birth control
mandate as “women who cannot figure out how to walk into Walgreens, lay
down the price of a latte, and walk out with her own birth-control
pills, no federal intervention necessary.

When conservatives fight to empower women to make decisions about their
own bodies in all cases, regardless of income, then maybe we’ll take
them seriously. In the meantime, there’s little of substance in an
ideology that promotes birth control without a prescription for some
women and hanging for others.

If one wants to realize just how bigoted and f*cked up things are in Virginia look no farther than the case of 14-year old Eric Martin who was bullied and beaten by at
least four Highland Springs High School classmates in Henrico County, Virginia. The beating put Martin in the hospital for 9 days. But who gets charged for assault and persecuted by the high school? Not those who beat him but Martin. It is this type of mindset in Virginia that allows anti-gay bullies to go unpunished and leads to suicides such as that of Christian Taylor of nearby Yorktown, Virginia. School administrators give lip service to "protecting all students" but what that equates to is protecting anti-gay bullies from accountability and the consequences of their violence towards LGBT students. Here are highlights from the New Civil Rights Movement:

Early last month 14-year old Eric Martin (photo, above) was bullied
and beaten by at least four Highland Springs High School classmates in
Henrico, Virginia.

Now, police are charging Eric with two counts of assault because he
supposedly threw the first punch. School officials refuse to allow him
back into school until he signs a statement saying he threatened the
school -- a charge he denies, and a charge for which the school has no
proof.

Eric was hospitalized for nine days because of the brutal beating. Early reports stated
"Eric's arm is possibly broken. He is suffering from a concussion, and
doctors have placed him on brain rest." He was also reportedly "on
suicide watch."

"When I try to call the school, and I try to get answers they just blow me off," Mary Martin, Eric's mother, told WWBT. "They don't want to talk to me." She says Eric has been called "gay" and a "faggot."

"Bullying is real," cried Martin. "And bullying can take your children away from here if you don't pay close attention."

Mary Martin "admits Eric threw the first punch, but she says he was a
victim of bullying. She says he was constantly hit with gay slurs," NBC
12 reports. "I'm angry, and I'm hurt," Mary Martin also said. "He's got bruises all down the spine of his back where he was just slammed on that table."

The Virginia Anti-Violence Project issued a statement that "condemns the brutal assault on Eric Martin."

Eric's family has started a campaign, Letters for Eric, to show the bullied teen support. The address is: Letters for Eric, P.O.Box 993, Sandston, Va. 23150.

Stories like this sicken me and are a reminder that no LGBT individual is truly safe in Virginia. Meanwhile, Victoria Cobb and the other hate merchants at The Family Foundation are likely celebrating that a gay teen "got what he deserved." As for the school officials, they need to be fired and have their teaching certificates revoked by the State Board of Education. Until administrators are held accountable, expect to see more stories such as this one coming out of Virginia. If you find this situation disgusting, contact the high school and voice your disgust: Highland Springs High, 15 S. Oak Avenue, Highland Springs, 23075 (804) 328-4000. Also consider contacting the Richmond tourism office - which has been trying to attract the LGBT tourist market - and tell them that because of this incident, you won't be visiting Richmond anytime soon. Here's the number: (800) 370-9004.

The Christofascists and falsely named "family values" organizations consistently claim that AIDS/HIV is God's punishment inflicted on gays for their failure to adhere to the Christofascists hate and fear based religious beliefs. The truth, of course, is something far different and conveniently ignores the reality that in Africa where the highest incidences of HIV/AIDS are among heterosexuals. Not that the "godly folks" ever let the truth get in the way of their theocratic, hate-filled agenda. Now, a new research has traced the beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to the 1920's in the Congo. Reuters has details. Here are highlights:

Bustling transport networks, migrant labor and changes to the sex trade in early 20th-century Congo
created a "perfect storm" that gave rise to an HIV pandemic that has
now infected 75 million people worldwide, researchers said on Thursday.

In an analysis of the
genetic history of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes
AIDS, the scientists said the global pandemic almost certainly began its
global spread in the 1920s in Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Here,
a confluence of factors including urban growth, extensive railway links
during Belgian colonial rule and changes in sexual behavior combined to
see HIV emerge in Congo's capital and spread across the globe.

Oliver Pybus, a professor at Oxford
University's zoology department who co-led the research, said that until
now most studies have taken a piecemeal approach to HIV's genetic
history and looked only at certain HIV genomes in particular locations.

"For
the first time, we have analyzed all the available evidence using the
latest phylogeographic techniques, which enable us to statistically
estimate where a virus comes from," he said. "This means we can say with
a high degree of certainty where and when the HIV pandemic originated."

United Nations
AIDS agency (UNAIDS) data show that more than 35 million people
worldwide are currently infected with HIV, and some 1.5 million people
died of AIDS-related illness in 2013.

Various strains of HIV are known to have been
transmitted from primates and apes to humans at least 13 times in
history, but only one of those transmissions - of a strain known as
HIV-1 Group M - led to the current human pandemic.

The team's findings also suggest that
along with transport, social changes such as the changing behavior of
sex workers and public health initiatives against other diseases that
led to the unsafe use of needles may have contributed to turning HIV
into a full-blown epidemic.

"We
think it is likely that the social changes around the independence in
1960 saw the virus break out from small groups of infected people to
infect the wider population and eventually the world," said Faria.

To date some 40 million people have died of AIDS and the vast majority have been heterosexuals. So the next time you hear some preacher bellowing from the pulpit about gays and AIDS, ask them to explain what has happened in Africa. It should also be noted that the use of condoms by both gays and straights can reduce the transmission of HIV. However, the Roman Catholic Church and some evangelical Christians oppose any form of birth control as they try to increase the number of members of their cults. Never mind that opposition to condoms has caused many to die needlessly.

As noted in prior posts, some wealthy Republican donors see the GOP's anti-gay platform to be a losing approach in the long term and are putting their money behind their efforts to make the GOP more inclusive and to support LGBT candidates. Like anti-gay churches in America, the GOP's self-prostitution to anti-gay Christofascists is alienating the younger generations even as elderly homophobes die off. The Washington Blade looks at coming conference between some such Republican donors and LGBT groups. Here are excerpts:

High-dollar donors seeking to make
the Republican Party more LGBT-inclusive are set to gather in D.C. on Thursday
for a closed-door conference, according to four sources familiar with the
event.

The American Unity Conference is set
to begin Thursday morning at the Hay Adams Hotel on H and 16th streets, N.W.
It’s hosted by the same pro-LGBT Republican advocates behind the American Unity
Fund and the American Unity PAC, related groups that seek to elect pro-LGBT
Republican candidates and encourage GOP support for LGBT rights.

Both organizations are funded by
Paul Singer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist who backs LGBT
rights, including same-sex marriage and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
His son, Andrew Singer, is gay.

Although the meeting is confidential
and off-the-record, the Washington Blade learned limited details based on
information from sources familiar with the conference. The American Unity Fund
didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Chad Griffin, president of the Human
Rights Campaign, is set to speak at the event, according to the sources,
despite his record as a Democratic operative. HRC didn’t respond to a request
for comment.

One source said Griffin’s role is
scheduled to be limited to an introduction of Theodore Olson, a former U.S.
solicitor general under the Bush administration who was lead counsel in the
federal lawsuit against California’s Proposition 8 and pending litigation
challenging Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Americans for Workplace Opportunity,
which was set up by Griffin as a collaborative project with other pro-LGBT
groups to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, also reportedly took
$375,000 from Singer to encourage House members to vote for the bill.

Singer himself is scheduled to
deliver remarks at the Hay Adams at 8:30 a.m. to kick off the event, according
to one source.

With new polls showing him trailing His Democrat challenger, Charlie Crist, Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott sought an ad that would attract women voters to his side. What he got from the College Republicans is a clueless ad that is both insulting to women - especially the segment of the women vote that Scott desperately needs - and Exhibit No. 1 of the problem of the GOP's gender gap in general. Contrary to what chauvinistic GOP males believe, women do care about more than shopping. I have two bright, intelligent daughters who are far more politically savvy than these dolts think they are. Slate looks at the clumsy GOP effort to attract women that in reality ought to be driving them into the arms of Democrats. Here are highlights:

Today in GOP Outreach to Women: You Broads Like Wedding Dresses, Right? At this point, it's hard not to wonder if the people being hired to
do outreach to women on behalf of Republican candidates aren't all a
bunch of Democratic moles. The College Republican National Committee
created this ad for Rick Scott, who is running for re-election as
governor of Florida, and it appears to be written by men who learned
everything they know about women from reading bridal magazines. It's
modeled after TLC's popular show Say Yes to the Dress, except it's called "Say Yes to the Candidate" and the "dresses" in this case are Rick Scott and Charlie Crist.

"The Rick Scott is perfect," says our blond and youthful heroine,
Brittany, admiring herself in the mirror while wearing a wedding dress,
which is a thing Republicans have heard women like to wear. Her friends ooh and aah.
But mom, who is of course a harridan because she dared age past 35, has
other ideas. "I like the Charlie Crist," she says, as we see
Brittany—an undecided voter, by the way—in a frumpier dress. "It's
expensive and a little outdated, but I know best." Ominous music.

It turns out Republicans made this ad in bulk. As Bloomberg View's Jonathan Bernstein notes, "not only does Brittney 'the undecided voter' think that 'The Rick Scott is perfect,' she feels the same way about 'The Rick Snyder,' 'The Tom Corbett' and three other dresses. The ads are identical, only the candidate names change."

I've noted often that to thrive extremist forms of religion require ignorant and uneducated populations. Hence why Christianity's main growth area at present is in the most backward regions of Africa. It's also the reason that American Christofascists seek to gut education programs in America and rewrite text books to support their poisonous belief system which begins to disintegrate in the face of scientific and modern knowledge. But religious extremism is not limited to Christian extremists as demonstrated by ISIS (or ISIL as it is sometimes called). To survive Islamic extremism also needs ignorant and uneducated populations. Apiece in the New York Times makes the case that to defeat ISIS not only must America and its allies use military might, but they also need to over time attack the underlying basis for religious extremism: lack of educated populations. Here are excerpts:

As
we fight the Islamic State and other extremists, there’s something that
President Obama and all of us can learn from them. For, in one sense,
the terrorists are fighting smarter than we are.

These extremists use arms to fight their battles in the short term, but, to hold ground in the long run, they also combat Western education and women’s empowerment. They know that illiteracy, ignorance and oppression of women create the petri dish in which extremism can flourish.

That’s why the Islamic State kidnapped Samira Salih al-Nuaimi, a brave Iraqi woman and human rights lawyer in Mosul, tortured her and publicly executed her last week. That’s why the Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai, then 15 years old, after she campaigned for educating girls. And that’s why Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria and announced that it would turn them into slaves.

In
each case, the extremists recognized a basic truth: Their greatest
strategic threat comes not from a drone but from a girl with a book. We
need to recognize, and act on, that truth as well.

For
similar reasons, the financiers of extremism have invested heavily in
fundamentalist indoctrination. They have built Wahhabi madrassas in poor
Muslim countries like Pakistan, Niger and Mali, offering free meals, as
well as scholarships for the best students to study in the gulf.

Shouldn’t we try to compete?

Shouldn’t
we use weapons in the short run, but try to gain strategic advantage by
focusing on education and on empowering women to build stable societies
less vulnerable to extremist manipulation?

[W]e’re
not playing the long game, as the extremists are. We are vastly
overrelying on the military toolbox and underemploying the education
toolbox, the women’s empowerment toolbox, the communications toolbox.
We’re tacticians; alas, the extremists may be better strategists.It’s not a question of resources, because bombs are more expensive than books.
The United States military campaign against the Islamic State, which is
also known as ISIS and ISIL, will cost at least $2.4 billion a year and
perhaps many times that

Obama seems to have dropped his 2008 campaign promise to establish a $2 billion global fund for education. And the United States gives the Global Partnership for Education, a major multilateral effort, less in a year than what we spend weekly in Syria and Iraq.

[T]he historical record of the last half-century is that education tends
to nurture a more cosmopolitan middle class and gives people a stake in
the system.

Girls’
education seems to have more impact than boys’ education, partly
because educated women have markedly fewer children. The result is lower
birthrates and less of a youth bulge in the population, which highly
correlates to civil conflict.

I
support judicious airstrikes in the short term against the Islamic
State, but that should be only one part of a policy combating extremism.
So let’s learn from the extremists — and from those brave girls
themselves who are willing to risk their lives in order to get an
education. They all understand the power of education, and we should,
too.

The USA never seems good at playing the long game. We need to think in the long term as well as short term military action. We also need to recognize the threat that our home grown extremists of every faith represent and oppose efforts to dumb down education and fill our text books with religious based fairy tales. It's no coincidence that overall belief in Bible inerrancy directly correlates with one's low level of education.

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

This blog has noted numerous times that, faced with a shrinking base of aging, angry white voters, the Republican Party nation wide has endeavored to pass voter ID laws to disenfranchise as many minority and college age voters as possible. The justification? To prevent "voter fraud" which various reports have shown to be a non-existent problem. This false justification plays well with the white supremacist element of the GOP base and is foolishly believed by lazy journalists and partisan pundits. With the GOP take over of the North Carolina legislature, that body - now perhaps the most extreme in the state's history - enacted new voter ID laws aimed clearly and disenfranchising minority and other voters unlikely to vote Republican. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit )"4th Circuit") struck down the North Carolina voter disfranchisement ID law. The court's opinion can be found here. Huffington Post has details:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a lower court to block two new voting restrictions in North Carolina, saying there was "no doubt" the measures would disenfranchise minorities.

North
Carolina will now be required to reinstate same-day voter registration,
as well as allow voters to cast ballots even if they show up to vote in
the wrong precinct.

In a two-to-one ruling, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that "whether the number is thirty or
thirty-thousand, surely some North Carolina minority voters will be
disproportionately adversely affected in the upcoming election" and that
it was important to act now, since "there could be no do-over and no
redress" once the election was over.

The appeals court ruled that the lower court "failed to adequately
consider North Carolina’s history of voting discrimination" and said the
new law eliminated "voting mechanisms successful in fostering minority
participation."

"The injury to these voters is real and completely irreparable if nothing is done to enjoin this law," the ruling said.

The law eliminated a number of measures intended to protect would-be
voters from being disenfranchised and required them to show photo
identification at the polls.

The Justice Department joined civil rights groups in suing over the law a month later.

"The
election laws in North Carolina prior to House Bill 589’s enactment
encouraged participation by qualified voters," the appeals court ruled
Wednesday. "But the challenged House Bill 589 provisions stripped them
away. The public interest thus weighs heavily in Plaintiffs’ favor."

In its ruling, the 4th Circuit gave the lower court a sever spanking. It also made this statement concerning specious justifications for disenfranchising voters. Here is a telling quote:

At the end of the day, we cannot
escape the district court’s repeated findings that Plaintiffs presented
undisputed evidence showing that same day registration and out-of-precinct voting
were enacted to increase voter participation, that African American voters disproportionately
used those electoral mechanisms, and that House Bill 589 restricted those
mechanisms and thus disproportionately impacts African American voters.

To us, when viewed in the context of
relevant “social and historical conditions” in North Carolina, Gingles, 478
U.S. at 47, this looks precisely like the textbook example of Section 2 [Voting
Rights Act] vote denial. . . . Neither North Carolina nor any other jurisdiction
can escape the powerful protections Section 2 affords minority voters by simply
"espous[ing]” rationalizations for a discriminatory law.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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